The present invention relates to a financial transaction system having high security because it uses single use codes thus eliminating totally the risk of a continued illicit use of a payment means misappropriated in any way and any means to the legitimate user.
All the payment systems where the financial transaction is effected without actual movement of cash money or any material payment means have a more or less high risk that the mechanisms and/or the results of the transaction are intercepted and/or misappropriated.
The security problem up to now was approached by adopting more and more sophisticated and complicated measures of protection but all these solutions have the drawback that the illicit use when started may continue undisturbed up to the moment in which it is discovered.
The system presently adopted regulating the use of credit cards provides that they use codes (numerical, alphanumerical, holographic codes and so on) identifying the owner (card holder) and his financial power warranting the credit for the financial transaction through the credit card.
In case of remoter payments through credit cards, it happens that the card holder must transmit to the transaction recipient all the card data authorizing the user for the agreed amount. In addition to the risk that the data can be illicitly used by the recipient, there is the much more frequent and actual risk of data interception by third parties illegally tapping into the communication between the two transaction parties or the data are subsequently misappropriated by ill-intentioned persons. The damage and inconvenience caused in these cases are well known.
The credit cards presently used have a poor degree of security and are subject to various kinds of problems and risks. The most important ones are the interception of the fixed codes of the credit card by ill-intentioned persons; in this case the misappropriator may carry out several transactions of various, and perhaps high, monetary value before the card holder realizes and does anything about it; and theft or loss of the credit card and also in this case the misappropriator once holding the credit card may carry out several transactions of various, and perhaps high, monetary value before the card holder realizes and does anything about it.
These problems of the credit cards have caused and are still causing huge damages both to the entities issuing the credit cards and to the card holders when they undergo these crimes. In view of these problems use of the credit cards as a payment system especially in some countries has difficulty gaining ground and sometimes is even opposed by the mass media especially for some special uses as the payments through internet where on the contrary the payment system by credit card is the most suitable for E-Commerce. It is clear that this situation creates serious damage and bias against the rapid development of E-Commerce on a worldwide scale.
The system according to the present invention consists of the basic principle that each financial transaction is provided with unique and unrepeatable identification means that are cancelled as soon as the transaction is terminated so that nobody including the legitimate holder may use again the same means to carry out new transactions and in the most advanced embodiments nobody including the legitimate holder knows in advance the new identification means that will be generated by the system to allow access to the subsequent transaction. In this way the risk of misappropriation is always limited to the only current transaction even in the most adverse and unfortunate circumstances. But even in case of theft, when using a secret transcodification code, the burglar cannot make any practical use of the card because the transaction code has not been transcodified as yet and therefore is not accepted by the system.
Therefore the system of the present invention really allows to carry out the so called monetics, that is a universal system of virtual money that is moved through an identifying single use code while under the term card any kind of support (paper, magnetic, electronic or else) is to be understood for the single use code allowing the movement of virtual money.
Therefore even if the term credit card or simply card will be used hereinafter, it is to be pointed out that the system is not at all limited to the use of cards as a support for the single use code.